Corsican is a Romance language that belongs to the Italo-Romance group. Corsican has been recognised since 1974 as a regional language in France by the Ministry of National Education. The language is officially recognised by the French Constitution as belonging to the heritage of France. Over the past 25 years, several laws, decrees, regulations,…

Breton (Brittany, France) and Lower Sorbian (Brandenburg, Germany) are two of the many endangered minority languages currently undergoing revitalization. In their cases, given that intergenerational transmission in a family setting has mostly ceased, language revitalization takes the form of educational initiatives, such as the immersion program…

This study sought to explore the ideological and implementational spaces for mainstreaming multilingual pedagogies (MPs) in initial teacher education (ITE) policies and curricula across the European Union. The concept of linguistically sensitive teaching (LST) was used as a lens to examine inclusive, equity-centred MPs in ITE. A multi-sited…

In this dossier, the situation of Iparralde is discussed, which occupies approximately two fifths of the French "département" (county) Pyrénées-Atlantiques. According to quantitative and socio-political criteria, the Basque language in France is a minority language. The aim of the Regional Dossier series is to provide concise…

This paper explores the experience and impact of participation in afterschool oral improvisation workshops -- bertso workshops -- for young Basque speakers. Drawing on participant observation and in-depth interviews among young people in the Northern Basque Country, the researcher, a practicing improviser, bertsolari, herself, argues that the…

This study focuses on Basque and Occitan teaching in southern France, where both are minority languages. More precisely, it aims to analyze teachers' view on the elements that enhance and hamper Basque and Occitan teaching. It considers the concept of phronesis or teacher effect to refer to the diverse strategies used by teachers to constantly…

In Bourdieusian theory, the use of so-called 'legitimate' language serves to maintain dominant power structures, with 'legitimacy' determined by an array of economic and social conditions inherent in speech communities. Standard languages function as normalised products and are imbued with a greater degree of legitimacy than non-standard varieties…

In the present study, we aimed to disentangle the impact of bilingualism and socioeconomic status (SES) on literacy in language-minority bilingual children (LMBC) and monolinguals exposed to French. We also wanted to explore the role of these two factors on cognitive and language skills, i.e., verbal knowledge (VK), morphosyntactic comprehension…

Discourses which seek to position different speakers/users of Breton through the use of labels such as 'traditional', 'new', 'learner', 'néo-bretonnant', 'brittophone', etc. draw on persistent essentialist ideologies of language and create, in the process, contested elites and counter-elites in Breton-speaking networks. These discourses can be…

The aim of the dossier is to provide a concise description of European minority languages in education. Aspects that are addressed include features of the education system, recent educational policies, main actors, legal arrangements and support structures, as well as quantitative aspects such as the number of schools, teachers, pupils, and…

This article explores the carefully managed semiotic complex found in the Corsican village of Pigna with respect to the themes of pride and profit in the valuation of minority languages. This complex includes the careful coordination of color, graphics, the use of the Corsican language, as well as high-tech soundscaping of place through QR codes…

Occitan, or the Oc language, is a Romance language. The focus in this dossier is on the four regions in France where Occitan is spoken: Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Occitanie, and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. Aspects that are addressed include features of the education system, recent educational policies, main actors, legal…

Breton ("Brezhoneg") is an indigenous Celtic language spoken only in Brittany (a peninsula in western France). Nowadays most Breton speakers live in the western part of Brittany ("Breizh-Izel," also called 'Lower Brittany'). However, there are also speakers in the eastern part ("Breizh-Uhel," 'Upper Brittany'),…

This paper explores linguistic landscapes and the enactment of public visibility and presence of non-majority linguistic groups in EU member states. Non-majority linguistic groups gain power, visibility and presence through the introduction of bilingual or multilingual signposts on roads, streets, squares, and public buildings in towns and cities…

This book explores how different European education systems manage multilingualism. Each chapter focuses on one of ten diverse settings (Andorra, Asturias, the Basque Country, Catalonia, England, Finland, France, Latvia, the Netherlands, and Romania) and considers how its education system is influenced by historical, sociolinguistic and…